Category: It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia

It’s been an… odd season of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Between dealing with the semi-retirement of one of its main characters, the struggle to keep the show fresh after 13 seasons, yet also satisfy those craving what they’ve been familiar with for all these years, the ever-changing landscape of television and what is supposed to make for good television, not to mention the ambitions of a very creative cast and crew, ambitions which are becoming harder and harder to contain, it’s made for a batch of ten episodes that could only be fairly described as inconsistent.

We started the season with The Gang trying to replace Dennis, only to realize that they couldn’t, and yet, even though the premiere promised his return, he was still absent from nearly half the remaining episodes, excused with some sort of contrivance such as a flashback or one character or another going off on their own adventures. We saw The Gang Minus Dennis celebrate Philly’s big Super Bowl win from last year over two uneven, incomplete-feeling episodes. We saw Dee try and recreate the Wade Boggs challenge from a couple of seasons back with only women, the start of a string of very topical episodes tackling #MeToo, the bathroom debate and much more, a run that crescendoed through three diverse, amazing episodes that could very well wind up on a list of best ever IASIP episodes. “Time’s Up For The Gang“, “The Gang Solves The Bathroom Problem” and “The Gang Gets New Wheels” are all instant-classics and they all work for very different reasons. The first two represent the tremendous new directions this show could wind up going, with a writer’s room stacked with newer, younger, more diverse voices capable of translating this posse of monsters to an era that’s much different than the one in which this show began nearly fifteen years ago. The latter is the kind of classic Sunny shenanigans featuring violent crime against children that remind us of how this show hasn’t really lost sight of what it’s always been, despite its aspirations to try new and different things.

And yet, even though the show was clearly preparing to launch us in an entirely new direction, I don’t think any of that prepared us for what happened in this week’s season finale, “Mac Finds His Pride”, an episode which veers so drastically to the left in its final act that it leaves you wondering where IASIP could go from here. After fifteen minutes or two of usual Sunny shenanigans, in which Frank is tasked with convincing Mac to dance on their gay pride parade float in order to I guess trick gays into coming to Paddys, the episode and the season goes somewhere very different, ending in an uninterrupted, jokeless interpretative dance in which Mac tries to convey to his father and his fellow convicts his internal struggle with being gay and coming out of the closet.

There’s no punchline. The woman Mac is dancing with is not Dee being grabbed by her private parts like the most raucous moment of that first #MeToo episode. The convicts don’t interrupt into violence after learning there’s no Blake Shelton concert, Frank doesn’t make some crass joke. Instead, the show decides to pay off the seeds they’ve been setting about Mac’s sexuality for over a decade. It decides to prove that being gay is not a punching bag for a show that’s cool with dunking on everybody. That it’s not just a character trait for Mac. Even though it was pretty cool when Mac came out of the closet last season and nothing really changed, this contextualizes it and him as a character and makes his arc meaningful.

In a weird way, it works almost the same way that the season 12 finale does. In that episode, Dennis decides he has to grow up and go raise his family. Despite the show’s best efforts to convince us that he didn’t really change upon his return this season, I think we can all agree that he sort of did. And the same could be said about Mac here. For the past season and a half, the show has been trying to convince us that Mac didn’t really change, other than being more open about what his dildo bike is for or what he’s doing with his Dennis real doll or all those peaches we see strewn across his apartment in this episode (an unsubtle nod to last year’s Call Me By Your Name and its most discussed scene). “Mac Finds His Pride” throws that out the window by admitting to itself and to its viewers that you can’t just play it cool with such a big character defining moment, especially one with as much cultural baggage as coming out of the closet. And both the show and Rob McElheney play it with style and class, not only in the amazing choreographed and performed dance at the end of the episode, but with how Mac comports himself as a real human being throughout.

And the low-key best thing about this episode is how it frames the story around Frank, believe it or not. Mac’s struggle is one we’ve seen in other shows and that, as the show hilariously points out, is hard to believe coming from someone who, in real life, is straight. McElheney and Charlie Day don’t want to shove anything down our throats and they certainly want to treat this topic gracefully, so instead, the story is told from Frank’s perspective, as an old, bigoted curmudgeon who readily admits he doesn’t and will never understand Mac and homosexuality. And yet, he’s just as surprised as we, the viewer, when he declares at the end of Mac’s dance, raucously cheering along with all the other convicts in attendance, that he finally understands.

It wasn’t only in that moment that I was pleasantly surprised by how they were treating this. All throughout the episode, Frank displays how he’ll do anything for The Gang. He’s tasked with getting Mac onto that float and never questions it. He just does it, and is willing to go to extreme lengths to satisfy his friends. And even though he has ulterior motives and questionable tactics, he decides to help Mac find his pride, his mojo by taking him around town to the gayest spots he knows. It’s weirdly sweet, as Frank reveals himself to be the true father figure on the show, which is especially interesting juxtaposed against Luther’s outright rejection of Mac, no matter his sexuality.

Of course that doesn’t take away from the last scene of the episode, which is really groundbreaking for the show and for McElheney’s character. It begs the question of where the show could go from here, if it’s forever changed or if this will just be another pivot point, much like Dennis’s departure last season. Either way, it proved that IASIP can be a lot more than just the same old show about assholes. I don’t know if this means that it will strive to be the next Louie or Atlanta in its already-announced 14th season, or if this is just an occasional out of the box thing that they could do, but it’s a great way to end a season of change. “Mac Finds His Pride” gets 9 sexy gay dances out of 10.

The Best Lines from the season finale of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:

No goddammits this week, and obviously with the the more serious tone of the final act there were less jokes than usual, but there are still some great lines and gags in this episode. Frank’s increasingly grotesque face and how they use it to sell the point about Mac letting the blood flow or whatever is pretty great, in particular.

Vulture did a great piece today about the dance, including interviews with Rob McElheney and others from the show. It’s a must-read.

Frank: “We’re making a float for the parade… to rope in the gays.”

Frank: “They give me one job and I gotta deal with your feelings?”

Frank: “This is a much better spread than they have at the straight orgies.”

Frank/Mac: “One false move and these fairies could poke me full of holes.” “What year is it in your head?”

It’s totally understandable that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia‘s take on the Vikings’ Super Bowl win earlier this year couldn’t be contained in a single episode. The way they split it up made total sense as well; the first episode, which aired last week, saw Charlie home alone at the bar, trying to overcome the odds after he gets his foot stuck in a bear trap and can’t do his usual array of superstitions. The show saved everything else for this week’s episode, “The Gang Wins the Big Game”, in which Mac, Frank, Dee and an array of Philadelphia’s biggest losers head to Minnesota in order to attend the game and help out their team. Both episodes brought very different things to the table and structurally stood on their own.

The problem with both is that they felt incomplete. Never mind Glenn Howerton’s absence (as these episodes took place while Dennis was away raising his child in North Dakota), they just felt like two halves of an episode that would have maybe been better served if they were meshed together in one single narrative. If anything, “Charlie’s Home Alone” felt like it needed more time, and this week’s episode struggled to fill it. This is so egregious that the cold open of both episodes are both mostly just the same thing up until the point where Charlie gets left home alone.

That’s not to say that both episodes aren’t funny, and don’t fit within the framework of makes for good Sunny. In this week’s episode particularly, we get to see a lot of the great side-character from the show which have mostly gone unused this season, from Uncle Jack to Cricket to Pondy, but few of them really got a chance to shine the way they might in an episode where they’re the focus. If anything, in the IASIP side-character power rankings, it’s probably the Waiter that makes the biggest jump, even though this is his second appearance of the season (the first, in the Ladies Boggs Reboot, foretells this flashback episode). Elsewhere, we get a great bit where a pink-eye infested Sweet Dee goes on a Mr. Magoo-like adventure on her way to blinding Tom Brady in the final minute of the game, and Frank has to pass a kidney stone to save the team. As for Mac, his role in the episode feels very much like he was doing what Dennis would have been doing, which gives us an interesting glance into what a full Dennis-less season of this show would have been like (my take is that this is not the role I necessarily want Mac to be filling). It was also impressive how they got to use actual footage from the Super Bowl, not to mention footage of Philly fans celebrating after the fact. Sports footage feels like something sacrosanct in America, so it’s rather impressive that they managed to pull that off.

“The Gang Wins the Big Game” has a lot of fun elements, but I don’t think it comes together. More or less specifically because it’s missing the Charlie elements from that week. I just felt as if I wanted more from both, especially after a string of great episodes earlier in this thirteenth season, and so much hype about these episodes, knowing they were coming. And it just feels as if it would have been an easy fix if this was an hourlong episode to open or close the season. That’s why this second part gets 6 expeditions for jean shorts out of 10.

The Best Lines from This Week’s Episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:

Goddamnit Count: 0, yet again! Maybe this is why these episodes didn’t click with me. Also no bird jokes at Dee’s expense despite being at an Eagles game.

Inarguably the funniest thing about this episode is how Danny DeVito has to use the shorter urinal. Also why does Mac have to take him to the bathroom?

Uncle Jack/Mac after Mac pulls off his giant hands: “Don’t make me go without them.” “I’m not making you go at all!”

Mac: “You have literally picked out the biggest pieces of shit in the city.”

Cricket: “I came up port side on a horse and he was a little quicker than me. Lesson learned.”

Mac after 11 plays of ‘Eye of the Tiger’: “It turns out there’s not that many songs about Philadelphia.”

After a raucous, delightful and even experimental string of four or five episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the show decided to get a little weirder than we’re probably used to with the eighth episode of this season. “Charlie’s Home Alone” is, for all intents and purposes, an experimental episode of IASIP. It mostly features just Charlie, it’s mostly set in the bar, and it goes to some bizarre places and extreme lengths to depict the events of what he went through during last year’s Super Bowl, when the Philadelphia Eagles finally won football’s top prize. What’s more, it’s only half the story, as it ends on a cliffhanger, promising to show us what Dee, Mac, Frank and some of the show’s fringe characters were up to at the same time, as early in the episode they depart on a party bus, bound for the Super Bowl, thinking Charlie is with them donning the Green Suit (the description suggests that Cricket might be the one that stole Charlie’s suit, leading to him being left behind).

Once they do, and Charlie realizes he’s been left behind (actually, he believes he’s wished his friends out of existence), the first act plays out exactly like the first act of Home Alone, from the Christmas music right down to the beats of certain scenes from that film as well as lines of dialog. This is in no way a Christmas episode of IASIP, which makes it all the more hilarious that they use the exact songs from that movie, as does the fact that Charlie never once acknowledge what he’s spoofing. After rifling through everyone’s stuff and taking his turn on Mac’s dildo bike, Charlie sets up shop at the bar, waiting for the game to begin. But when a couple of locals try to get into Paddy’s, Charlie assumes they’re intruders and begins setting up a bunch of traps.

The episode takes a drastic left turn when he sets off one of his own traps, namely a bear trap. The loss of blood, the brutal cauterizing scene and everything that follows take this from Home Alone to something more along the lines of 127 Hours or The Revenant, as Charlie fights to fulfill his usual superstitions, thinking that if he doesn’t, the Eagles will lose the Big Game. He drops a green paint bucket on his head, because he has to wear green. He eats a rat, because he has to eat brown. He drinks his own pee (of course) because he has to drink yellow. And when hallucinations of Eagles players inform him how he could (easily) get out of the bear trap and he turns on the TV to see Tom Brady in possession with time on the clock, they tell him he has to get back in it as it’s part of his superstitions now.

That’s about where the episode ends, following an extended, brutal sequence of torture porn. We, in reality, know that the Eagles go on to win the Super Bowl, but the show decides to save that fact for next week and the other side of the story. Which is, honestly, a little frustrating for a show like, no less an episode like this, which is already a tad unusual. Don’t get me wrong, despite the fact that it’s an incomplete episode and that it lands on certain uncomfortable extremes with how it treats Charlie, it’s still full of laughs and has some good highs. But it also doesn’t feel like what I would have wanted out of an episode like this.

It’s funny, because it kind of reminded me a little of the seminal “Charlie Work”, the seminal season 10 episode rightfully lauded as one of the best of the series, in large part for its experimental, precognisant parody of Birdman and other movies with long tracking shots. But that episode was written by Charlie Day, Rob McElheney and Glenn Howerton. This one was written by first timers Adam Weinstock and Andy Jones, likely part of the show’s effort to diversify and rejuvenate its writer’s room as those three co-creators took a step back, thanks to their increasingly busy schedules and, notably, Glenn Howerton’s teased semi-absence from the show. Howerton in particular is completely absent from this episode, as it takes place during a time where his character would have been away from Philadelphia and The Gang. I don’t want to blame it specifically on those two guys, because the makeup of the show has been completely different and other combinations of new writers have paid dividends this season, but it does feel like the failures of this episode could probably be pointed to a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes experimental episodes like “Charlie Work” so special. And what makes them special is that while they’re trying something crazy, something new, they still feel like the core of the same show. Charlie Day does his best to make that work here, and I don’t exactly mean to say that the stuff his character is doing isn’t stuff we’d think he’d do, but something feels off about it, or missing, and it’s more glaring when there’s only one character to carry the plot and the comedy.

“Charlie’s Home Alone” isn’t a terrible episode. It’s an incomplete episode, and unfortunately it’s probably the worst of this thirteenth season, so it gets 6.5 sticky bibles out of 10.

The Best Lines from “Charlie’s Home Alone:”

Goddammit Count: unless I missed some during Charlie’s wailing, I didn’t hear any this week.

Dee: “First of all, how is ‘salmonella’ the only word you spelled right?”

Charlie: “I made my friends disappear. I made my friends disappear!”

Guy: “Well, which one is it? Is it closed for salmonella or is it closed for Super Bowl?”

Charlie after doing the aftershave bit from Home Alone: “I don’t know why I’m screaming, this doesn’t hurt at all?”

Charlie after getting a nail in the shoulder from his own trap: “Why would anybody do that to anybody?”

“You bought the trap, Charlie. I only know about the release lever because you know about the release lever. You get that, right?”

“Every single thing a fan does, at home or at the game, has a direct impact on the game.”

One of the best things about It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia is how much they can create out of so little. This has never been a high budget show. It’s seldom been a show that ventures outside of the handful of its established sets. And yet, those episodes, even the ones confined specifically within the walls of Paddy’s Pub, often wind up ranking among the show’s best.

The show has been on a helluva run in this thirteenth season, and a lot of that has to with this aforementioned efficacy. The last three episodes in particular have been incredible, starting with The Gang tackling the #MeToo movement, all within the confines of a hotel conference room, followed by an episode of classic shenanigans that ends as absurdly and as dark as we’ve ever seen on this show, and culminating with last week’s politics-infused bottle episode. The streak continued this week with “The Gang Does a Clip Episode”, another bottle episode, this time featuring clips from the show’s past before things get weird and meta and inspired by Inception. Like last week, outside of said clips and flashbacks, the action largely takes place within the confines of the bar. Hell, all five characters barely move from their seats, and the episode even comes in a little shorter than usual. And yet, remarkably, the show and the episode’s writers (Dannah Phirman and Danielle Schneider, the duo who also wrote the Wade Boggs reboot episode earlier this season) still find ways to cram it full of great jokes, unexpected twists and things we’ve never seen from the show before.

“That’s what you do when you start getting old. You start reliving the glory days because you can’t think of anything new to do.”

Those words are uttered by Dennis at some point in the episode, which features the gang sitting around reliving their memories while they wait for their phones to update to the newest version of the software, so they can go back to ignoring each other. It’s obviously meant as a self-referential dig, as IASIP is archaic as far as modern shows – especially sitcoms – are concerned. But nothing could be further from the truth about this episode, since it finds something new, something unique to do with a sitcom format that’s been around for ages.

The meta clip show has been done in and of itself. Community did it a couple of times and shows like How I Met Your Mother and New Girl even baked it into their formulas, but I don’t think I can remember a show that took actual clips from its past and changed them in order to do an Inception-style “what reality is this” bit. The way they peppered in fake clips with the real ones was great. The way reality started to change around them was hilarious; people are already talking about Frank with hair and creepily long legs, but Charlie peaking into his own memories is possibly the funniest thing I’ve seen on TV in a while. Not to mention the word-for-word Seinfeld “The Contest” recreation, complete with two Jerrys. And the best part is that it ends implying that the show going forward is ostensibly taking place within Charlie’s mind (although you could have said that about the show for the past few years, to be honest).

This feels like the kind of episode people will either love or hate. It’s both a little too meta and a little too confined, but I thought the show found brilliant ways to elevate the shortcomings of the bottle/clip episode in perfectly IASIP ways, with perfectly IASIP gags and jokes.

I truly have trouble wrapping my head around how It’s Always Sunny manages to stay this good and this consistent after so many years, no less how it’s managed to put out four bangers in a row. “The Gang Does A Clip Show” gets 9.5 software updates out of 10.

The Best Lines from S13E07 of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:

Goddamnit Count: I didn’t hear any this week! That said there were a bunch of uncensored “fucks” (and a censored R-word, curiously enough).

I won’t throw in any lines from the clips but my favourite is probably a tie between Wildcard/the Implication.

Frank: “Do you remember when I sowed myself into the couch naked?”

Charlie: “The way you tell that is like I was there, and I was not there.”

Frank on Dee’s accents: “You’re remembering the time you burned a Mexican’s house down.”

Dennis on Dee’s accents: “We decided that isn’t funny anymore, as a society.”

Dee: “Yeah, what was that, I am not an ostrich.”

Mac/Frank: “Wait, you went to North Dakota?” “I don’t remember Dennis leaving.”

Charlie: “Now I’m getting confused because I was remembering the time I spoke Chinese. They gave me a magic pill and now I speak it fluently.”

Frank on Seinfeld: “So Jewish.”

Doctor/Dee/Doctor: “Your penises have suffered severe abrasions. The skin has been all but been removed from the organs. I’ve never seen anything like it.” “And my vagina?” “I’m afraid it’s been obliterated.”

Dennis: “For Christ’s sakes we can’t even sit around having memories without things getting out of hand.”

Dennis/Frank: “Frank, are you tall and handsome with a full head of hair?” “I’d like to think so, but no.”

Charlie: “Dennis, everyone knows that the most annoying person in the world is Mac. So why would you want to live with him?”

Dennis: “I love having a roommate who spends three hours a day on a dildo bike.”

The funniest thing about yet another hilarious season 13 episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is that the debate that The Gang is having about who should be able to use what bathroom isn’t that far removed from reality, at least in terms of the scope if its ridiculousness. In “The Gang Solves The Bathroom Problem”, they never venture too deep into the actual crazy arguments that most conservatives lean on in this debate, but the idea that one’s identity needs to be tied to where they poop, that one’s safety is in jeopardy if we change the current status quo, is a big part of what’s at stake in the episode, as well as a lot of other more generic political and social topics that The Gang tackles, as the show returns to its more meta format after taking a week off for some more classic Sunny style shenanigans.

In the episode, The Gang, and Dee in particular, are horrified when they see Mac coming out of the women’s bathroom, using his homosexuality as an excuse for why he should be able to use it. The guys first decry his argument to be silly, but when they venture into Dee’s bathroom and realize it’s much better and cleaner than theirs, they all want a piece of the action, leading to a bar-confined debate that spans all of the topics mentioned above, and that winds up going to some truly depraved places as everyone’s poop secrets are revealed.

It’s a classic Sunny bottle episode, akin to the classics “Charlie Work” and “CharDee MacDennis” (although, to be fair, almost every episode this season has veered pretty close to bottle episode status). The entire episode is confined within Paddy’s Pub in order for The Gang to have it out, in this case over politics, which seems to be the new normal for the show. Lining that discussion is a wonderfully ridiculous premise of this being the day of The Gang’s yearly pilgrimage to go see one Jimmy Buffett in concert. Adding to the brilliance is the fact that they never once play Margaritaville or any other Buffett songs, opting instead to score the episode to Rupert Holmes’ Escape (The Pina Colada Song), which many confuse for a Buffett joint. The premise is that half the gang’s disinterest with Buffett himself and the arguments they usually have the night prior always detract from the Buffett experience, and Dennis is desperate to avoid the same trap. Of course, it doesn’t quite pan out that way for him, as The Gang spends the night debating potential changes to Paddy’s bathroom policy, shifting alliances and revealing scatological secrets about one another, all whilst getting into the petty argument they wished to avoid.

Some fans of the show (probably ones who come to it largely for the dunking they do on the one female character) might be growing wary of the show’s bleeding heart liberal stances on big issues this season, but I think it’s been a breath of fresh air for a show that’s been on this long, and it certainly hasn’t detracted from IASIP’s ability to be hilarious. “The Gang Solves The Bathroom Problem” hits all of the checkmarks needed for the show and continues it’s impressive streak in this unprecedented 13th season, so it gets 9 gender fluids out of 10.

The Best Lines From “The Gang Solves The Bathroom Problem:

Goddamnit Count: A healthy four this week. More impressive is Mac dropping almost as many F-bombs in this episode, all at Dee’s expense.

Frank: “This is all confusing. Why do I have to keep learning new things?”

Mac describing his dick mosaic, to the stunned silence of the rest of the Gang: “There’s also pictures of roadkill and roast beef sandwiches to accurately depict what a vagina looks like.”

Dee/Frank on the religious symbols on Frank’s sign: “I assume the dollar sign is meant to represent the Jews?” “Well it ain’t the Mormons.”

Dennis/Charlie: “We’re talking about evolution, all of a sudden we’re arguing about racism or whether or not ghouls exist.” “They do though, cause I’ve seen one.” (Charlie proceeds to try and choke Mac)

Mac/Frank on soundproofing the bathroom: “Some noise to cover the sound.” “Loud noises, like screaming.”

Frank, reading the constitution for the first time: “This is wild stuff. There’s a part in here that says that freed slaved are only three fifths of a person.”

Dee/Frank: “How do you use three fifths of a bathroom?” “Piss in the sink.”

Dennis: “I beg you to stop using the constitutions in the way you’re using it.”

Charlie‘s vote swings one way or another based on how the people who are talking are dressed (much like real swing voters): “I like the hat. I was focused on that most of the time. I’m kinda leaning towards you, I don’t know why. Might be the shirt.”

Mac: “We need to change out attitudes. And we need to change our latitudes.”

Dennis/Mac: “Are you more gay than Catholic?” “I don’t know, they’re at war!”

Dennis: “Finally! A win for straight white men.”

Dennis: “As a straight man I actually love Pina Coladas. But I don’t like getting caught in the rain, flattens my hair.”

Charlie/Dee: You know, as a man who poops transgender-” “You gotta let that go.”

Dee/Charlie/Mac: “If we’re all the same then why don’t we focus on treating other people the way we want to be treated?” “Dee… we were just talking.” “Yeah, shut the fuck up. SHUT THE FUCK UP.”

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has been the recipient of much praise on my part for the changes made over the course of the season, changes necessary following the (very temporary) departure of Glenn Howerton and the increasingly busy schedules of all its stars/creators. Instead of sunsetting a show that clearly still has a ton of life left in it, The Gang used it as an opportunity to inject it with new life behind the scenes, stacking its writers’ room and director’s chair with a bunch of new talented people, many of whom are women, such as Megan Ganz, one of TV’s best writers.

The result has been a lot of meta commentary about equality, the patriarchy, trump-era politics, etc., all culminating in last week’s brilliant, raucous episode, in which The Gang attends a sexual harassment seminar (from which, of course, they learn nothing, as it turns out it was all orchestrated by Dennis in an attempt to gain a leg up in the group’s confusing political structure). And that’s great. But that’s a high concept and it really isn’t a sustainable format for this show. Eventually, The Gang has to wrap up all the sexual harassment seminars and Wade Boggs flights and whatever else have you and return to their normal array of despicable hijinx.

Luckily, that’s exactly what happens in “The Gang Gets New Wheels”, a hilarious return to form for the more standard style of IASIP episode and the second straight uproarious, perfectly lecherous episode of the show, especially in its final act.

The episode sees Dennis looking for a new car after he finds his Range Rover suffering the effects of being left on the streets of Philadelphia for an extended period of time. When Frank opts to get the new 2018 model for himself instead of financing Dennis’ schemes as he usually does, he’s forced to get a Prius, a more economical car, which leads him to making what he deems to be economical choices with his lifestyle, such as playing fantasy football. While Dennis is losing his Golden God powers, they wind up transferred to Dee, who is drying around in Frank’s new car while he gets his license renewed. She Gangs up with a couple of other Range Rover housewives, who eventually slight Dee to the point where she resolves to cuck one of them. Meanwhile, Charlie and Mac revisit their inner child by buying a couple of bikes, only to find themselves in trouble with a gang of young bullies, one of whom happens to be the kid of their own childhood bully (played by Tyler Labine).

A lot of that is setup, and it plays off that way in the episode, but it’s utterly necessary for the Curb Your Enthusiasm way it winds up weaving together in the final act. You see, Dee thinks she’s having sex with her foil’s young husband, when in fact it’s her teenage son, whom Frank promised he would get laid. Charlie and Mac decide to, in their words, take back their identities and confront their antagonists, it just so happens that this means beating the shit out of a bunch of kids in a scene as funny and unexpected as when Mac grabs Dee by the pussy last week. As for Dennis, he gets lucky when he finds that his new economical buddy owns a ’93 Range Rover, which he acquires for a modest sum. On his peaceful way home, listening to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”, he finds the rest of the Gang running from their respective problems (aka the cops), and picks them up, declaring everything to be fine now that they’re back in the Rover.

It’s no surprise that the episode ends with everything returning to normal (despite the various manhunts likely being staged for most of them) but it plays so beautifully over the course of the episode. Every string they lay pays off. It’s a ridiculous episode that shouldn’t make sense when you think about it, but it’s also the product of a show that’s spent 13 years building that seasoning, ensuring that they can pull of a brazenly ridiculous, offensive episode such as this with effortless precision. As much as I love how meta this season has been so far, to see a return to the classic style of Gang hijinx and to see it be as good as the show’s always been is incredibly impressive and refreshing.

“The Gang Gets New Wheels” will compete with the best episodes in recent seasons, and it gets 9.5 bowls of chili out of 10.

The Best Lines from “The Gang Gets New Wheels”:.

Goddamnit count: I only counted 1 this week!

Frank license picture is clearly an old still from Danny DeVito’s Taxi days, which is amazing.

Nothing makes me happier than the fact that they used “On Your Bike” as the song choice for when Mac and Charlie are riding their new bikes.

Mac: “Radical!”

Mac: “Well, I am gya, but he’s not my boyfriend. I could do much better than him.”

Charlie: “Don’t push your agenda on them, Mac!”

Dee: “Brenda, you gotta upgrade you stupid bitch. Don’t be a dumb idiot.”

Frank: “What you wanna do is you lurch into the intersection. It’s kinda like a game of chicken. You lurch and then you lurch some more and whoever doesn’t flinch gets to go first.”

Frank: “You can’t be PC on the road and expect to live. You will die. If you go to a four-way stop and you think the rules of the road are going to apply to an 80-year-old Asian woman, you’re going to get blasted.”

Dennis/John: “You got a good economy face on you too.” “What?”

Dennis: “It always seemed foolish to me before, but this economy car is starting to make me think I can enjoy economy activities.”

It’s funny, the question of how a show like It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia could survive in the post-MeToo world (or even, more generally, in the increasingly progressive/”woke” world we find ourselves living in) has never really crossed my mind, despite the fact that this is a show that almost persistently ventures into crass and offensive territory, or maybe it’s because I’ve always trusted the people behind it and their intentions. And yet, here we are, in the show’s unprecedented 13th season, witnessing the show’s strong attempts to change with the times and evolve. Not only by addressing these topics head on (without losing track of the no-holds-barred sense of humour that’s kept it around for this long), but by addressing them behind the scenes as well.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the Sunny writer’s room and troupe of directors, which has been predominantly male for over a decade, is now considerably more female, with The Mick import Kat Coiro and one of TV’s best writers, Megan Ganz, front and center, having written/directed two episodes so far this season including tonight’s impeccable “Time’s Up For The Gang”.

It’s impressive in and of itself that the show made these changes preemptively, before anyone noticed or really said anything. But it makes sense, not only because it allows the show to remain topical when the topics at hand are becoming increasingly sensitive, but also because the show’s creators are becoming busier and busier and changes were going to have to be made anyway. They made the changes the right way, and while some may say that these first few episodes of the season have been weak, I personally feel as if the show has felt like a breath of fresh air, on top of having a renewed sense of relevance.

Previous episodes this season have tackled such things already, but “Time’s Up” is the season’s most topical episode to date, and it not only delivers on some great commentary, but it’s also probably the funniest episode of the show in recent memory. The episode has The Gang attending a sexual harassment seminar after someone put them on some sort of online list. They are as disruptive as you expect them to be, antagonizing both the moderators and each other as, progressively, each of them experiences the “heat” of the changing climate, before Dennis, in a long-winded speech, reveals that he orchestrated the whole thing in order to get a leg-up on the group.

The episode is riddled with poignant commentary about Me Too (both about sexual harassment itself and the misguided attempts to take it down with arguments such as “not all men” and victim blaming, things that seem especially touchstone at a time where an alleged rapist is being thrust onto the Supreme Court) and said changing climate, but it doesn’t lose sight of the things that make Sunny great. For starters, the whole point of the episode isn’t really to make fun of Me Too or to try and put men down, or whatever. It’s all about the power dynamics in the group. Dennis does this because he sees things shifting, not in the climate but among his gang of degenerates. He wants them to know their place.

And it’s also great because it’s probably the funniest episode of the show in a good long while. From Dennis’s speech, to Frank’s antics trying to keep his stolen robe on, culminating with Mac literally grabbing Dee by the pussy, there’s a lot of great stuff here, stuff we’ll mostly get to in the notes below. It works because it balances the funny and the relevance. And it’s exactly why IASIP needs to continue to exist. “Times Up For The Gang” gets 10 year passed the statute of limitations out of 10.

Frank: “You kids and your climates. Back in the day I banged all my secretaries. That’s the way you did it. You hire some girl with no experience, you bang her, you promote her. It’s a win-win situation for everyone, except for the wives.”

Dee: “Eh yo! Who’s ready to party ! TimesUpTimesUpTimesUpTimesUp!”

Kate/Frank: “Yes, you have a question?” “Statute of limitations?”

Frank: “They got nothing on me passed ’92, tops.”

Charlie: “We really don’t know how funny the joke is yet because we haven’t seen the girl’s boobs. Can we see them?”

Charlie on Mac: “He’s just, like, our gay guy now.”

Mac: “Now, should I take my shirt off for this scenario?”

Dee: “It made me feel tiny, like Thumbelina!”

Frank: “I’m sweating through my clothes. It’s this damn climate!”

Frank: “Shit, I just looked at her tits.”

Dee: “I like the tactic here. Get em all horny with your titties. That’s when they make their mistakes.”

Frank: “Hey, Larry? How soon can you get to the Hyatt? My dong fell out. A woman saw it.”

Any other show would bungle an episode like “The Gang Beats Boggs: Ladies Reboot”. But for It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, it’s exactly what we needed to see. Thirteen seasons in, a show unabashedly borrowing a concept from an earlier popular episode, replacing the cast with female side characters for the sake of making some meta commentary points and ending with everyone puking and shitting their pants would probably signal its death knell. But here’s, it’s unironically a sign that IASIP hasn’t lost a step.

The episode has Sweet Dee gathering all of the women she knows and can tolerate on a flight headed for the women’s march. But they’re not on it to celebrate their womanhood or to protest the current administration, they’re there because Dee is constantly trying to figure out how to stick it to the guys, and her latest scheme involves having one of the girls beat Wade Boggs’ record of drinking 71 beers on a flight to Los Angeles before winning the big game the next day. Only Dee doesn’t actually want “the women” to beat the record, she wants to beat the record and all the other women herself, because she’s a narcissistic misanthrope with a warped sense of feminism, and it says a lot about her that the only women she can harangue are two of her friends’ moms, The Waitress and Artemis (and, as we find out later, Snail, who is hiding and drinking quietly on her own in first class). Also she’s a bird.

It’s kind of a perfect setup. The show does well when re-exploring its own conceits, as this isn’t the first time its rebooted an episode. It also does well when it sets Dee up against everyone, because she’s a frustrated failure and she only gets funnier when her back is up against the wall (this episode features a lot of “goddamnits”). And it’s nice to see some recurring characters get their time to shine, as each of the four ladies have several great moments in this episode.

In a weird way, this episode does a lot to show that there is a version of IASIP that can survive without all of its main characters. While Frank, Charlie and Mac all sneak in cameos (The Waiter is also there, although who are we to remember every man we’ve seen fall into a plate of spaghetti), this is the first episode of the season with no sign of Dennis. While he still looms over the show (there is a lot of talk about his stay in North Dakota and, in fact, Dee winds up there herself, which may play in to a future reveal about Dennis’s kid there), this episode works without the classic Gang chemistry, and it works because Kaitlyn Olson is a great actress who has spent fifteen years honing what kind of character Sweet Dee actually is. And, as I said, she doesn’t hog the screen either.

The meta-commentary about feminism and lazy media attempts at representation were pretty spot-on as well, continuing the trend started in last week’s episode and that clearly seems to be a priority this season, with a lot more women working on the show behind the scenes and a concerted effort to make the show more relevant and topical. Without, of course, losing any of its charm, as suggested by the episode’s crux, where Artemis’ spiked Goop-style products induce mass vomiting and diarrhea amongst the women on the flight.

There’s little more you can hope for as a creative person than to see your meta-episode about lazy, diversity-induced spinoffs actually wind up being funny and memorable. And there are plenty of moments in this Boss Hogg sequel that work. “The Gang Beats Boggs: Ladies Reboot” gets 8 pussies on the track out of 10.

Here are some of the best lines from “The Gang Beats Boggs: Ladies Reboot”:

Goddamnit Count: 7

A couple of great sight gags: Drunk Dee imagining Martina Navratilova all wrong and then picturing Boss Hogg instead of Wade Boggs, Charlie and Mac repeatedly yelling that Dee’s a bird before their facetime cuts out.

Mrs Kelly: “I didn’t know it was an all female flight. That feels dangerous.”

Artemis/Dee: “I don’t get it. You already did this. Shouldn’t we do our own thing? Why are we copying the guys?” “That’s the whole point. It’s the exact same thing, but with women. So it’s a new idea.”

Mrs. Mac: “What kind of a plane is this? How come the coloreds are allowed to sit with the whites and we’re way back here?”

After It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia devoted its thirteenth season premiere to the pressing question of whether or not Glenn Howerton’s Dennis would return to the show, things were unsurprisingly back to normal in “The Gang Escapes”. In fact, the episode holds itself to Dennis’ word, not worry about why or how he’s back or for how long, plunging The Gang right back into the type of low-brow, inconsequential misadventures we’re here for.

The funny thing is that the episode, which, at Sweet Dee’s request, has The Gang locked in Dennis and Mac’s apartment doing one of those escape room team-building challenge thingies, opens with Dennis actually trying to justify why he and the other guys would do something like that, establishing that there need to be stakes; in this case, an actual sirloin steak, to be purchased for the winner by Amanda, the girl setting all of this up, along with disturbing promises of sexual conquest. In true Sunny form, however, Dee has ulterior motives, having already done this exact escape room before, attempting to make herself look good in front of the guys.

Things devolve pretty quickly, as you might expect. The guys lock Dee in Dennis’ bedroom the moment she starts being annoying. In there she must escape a room of her own, as Dennis has set it up for his deviant sexual conquests. Outside, the guys pair off when their egos get in the way and they can’t decide on a leader between Dennis and Frank, but when they match each others’ tactics (The Art of the Deal, bro!), they decide to hold a summit where a pecking order is decided and they put their clues for the escape room together, only to discover it’s just the beginning. Luckily, Dee falls off the building forcing Amanda to open the door before the deadline, thus earning everyone their steaks and their picture on the company’s website. In fact, in a surprisingly sweet moment for this show, the guys let Dee take a bite of her steak first for leading them to victory.

The episode wastes no time delving into topics such as machismo and toxic masculinity, putting the guys against both Dee and each other in a bid for dominance. It treats the idea of an escape room like mice in a laboratory maze, compacting all the terrible things about the guys into an environment where they can quickly manifest themselves and explode. But it all kind of works because obviously it’s satirical and tinged with irony. What’s more, it’s an episode written and directed by women. Megan Ganz, formerly of Community and Modern Family fame joined the show last season (writing the equally hilarious and meta The Gang Tends Bar), and while I consider her to be one of the best working sitcom writers and she certainly earned her job based on skill and merit, it’s also clearly part of an attempt to diversify the Sunny writer’s room. This is a show that has been largely written by men (even outside the bulk of the episodes written by its three main stars and creators), and while most would likely consider the likes of McElheney, Howerton and Day to be relatively woke, it’s an interesting direction for the show to take after so many years. Not only is this episode written by a woman and directed by a woman (LP), but so are most of the next four episodes, and that’s probably a bigger deal than most will give credit.

It doesn’t really affect the quality of the show one way or another, it’s still just as funny and ridiculous, and the stars’ influence over it still persists, even though these changes were likely made to accommodate their increasingly busy schedules as actors and producers. But it’s a positive sign to see a show thirteen seasons old capable of making big changes in the way it’s written and produced, capable of tackling subjects not outside of the show’s realm, but potentially from different angles, all without losing much of a step. “The Gang Escapes” is both topical and timeless, hilarious and well-made. And with everything so quickly going back to normal for The Gang, it reassures me that this is a shot that still has a lot of life left in it.

“The Gang Escapes” gets 8 ounces of sirloin steak out of 10.

Here are some of the best lines from “The Gang Escapes”:

First and foremost, the Goddamnit Count. I forgot to do this last week, but I don’t remember hearing any. This week the show comes out swinging, with 5 instances of the gang (mostly Dee) expressing their displeasure with the show’s signature word.

I also want to shout out Charlie’s speech as speaker during the summit. Too much of it was hilarious to transcribe but the whole thing was just phenomenal.

Dennis: “I’m fully aware of this practice. It’s a highly sexual experience for people. You’ll get no judgements from us.”

Mac: “This sounds very nerdy. Is this a nerd thing?”

Mac: “Men don’t do things just to do them. We’re busy running the world, providing for our families. We need stakes. If there’s no stakes, what’s the point?”

Dennis: “I get out of the room, that means I win the game, the lady here, she takes me out for a steak, then it becomes sexual.”

Charlie: “Frank hasn’t been locked up since the nitwit school, so he gets a little uptight about it.”

Frank: “Everybody knows quarterbacks are men.”

Dennis/Mac: “By constantly chewing so loudly he’s sending a very clear message that he is the head cow. And as we all know, the head cow is always grazing.” “Aren’t all cows female?”

Dennis: “Mac, sometimes I’m just riffing. Would you allow me to riff? As the leader, can I riff? CAN I RIFF!?”

Mac: “Just to clarify, are we monkeys or are we cows?”

Frank: “It’s a power play. Everybody knows that the head cow is always grazing.”

Mac: “Never trust another man in negotiation! That’s textbook. Art of the Deal! Art of the Deal, bro!”

Computer Dennis: “Remember, if you’re having too much fun, it ruins it for me.”

Computer Dennis: “Ugh ugh ugh! You didn’t say the safe word.”

Amanda/Dee: “This is insanely disturbing.” “You do it for a living, get off your high horse.”

Dennis: “Clever girl.”

Dennis: “You figured out the only loophole in my carefully curated and well-researched bondage facility. You’re the only person who’s ever done that. The only one. THE ONLY ONE.”

Ever since Dennis was written off It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia last season, and Glenn Howerton and the rest of the gang spent the ensuing months insisting that they weren’t sure how or if he’d ever come back to the show, fans have been lamenting what the show would look like without one of its five key ingredients. The rest of The Gang are all interesting characters in their own right, but the show has always worked because of the dynamic between the five (and I say this knowing that Danny DeVito was only added to the show in season 2). Most fans feared the worst, but, to tell you the truth, I was kind of curious what the show would look like sans-Dennis.

In this week’s season 13 premiere, “The Gang Makes Paddy’s Great Again”, we got a glimpse of what this Dennis-less show would look like, and yet the episode was almost entirely about how he loomed over the show, as The remaining Gang turns to Cindy (a guest-starring Mindy Kaling) as a replacement leader but quickly finds that Dennis’ disapproving, judgmental aura continues to haunt them, especially after a newly super fit Mac reveals that he’s ordered a specially-made sex doll that looks exactly like his former roommate/not-best friend. Cindy schemes to pit liberals against conservatives in order to drum up business for the bar and shut down the competition around the corner, and at first The Gang is into it and sees how Cindy brings out the best in them, but they very quickly get in their own heads about what Dennis would say, the presence of the sex doll not helping.

By the end of the episode, Dennis has inexplicably returned and Cindy is cast out of the bar, with everything returning to normal. No questions are asked about where Dennis has been and why he’s back, and while I would expect the show to address all of that in a future episode, I don’t think anyone really minds. In fact his sudden return, including downplaying why he’s back, is quite funny in and of itself and perfectly executed for this show. The scene at the end of the episode where Dennis suddenly standing where the sex doll was propped up is perfect. He surprises everyone, causing Frank to draw and quickly fire his weapon at him, and within the span of about 90 seconds thereafter he’s successfully driven Cindy away, surmised what Mac is doing with his likeness and thrown casual, devastating insults at both him and Dee.

That’s not to say that the rest of the episode doesn’t work without his actual presence. There’s a sincere self-awareness that permeates the episode. The Gang is aware of the fact that they’re incomplete, yet it doesn’t really change the dynamic. Mac is still woefully insecure, resorting to getting utterly jacked thinking that it’ll make his friends happy or somehow help with their schemes (the fact that Rob McElheney put his body through that for the sake of comedy is a perfect as it was when he gained an obscene amount of weight for a previous season). Dee is a broken creature who would rather return to the bottom of the group’s pecking order with Dennis if it means she’s the only woman in the group. Even Charlie is having a tough time, suddenly dating the Waitress and hating it. In all honesty, this is as much an episode about Mac as it is an episode about The Gang coping with the loss of Dennis.

There’s a lot of great stuff in the first 18 minutes of the episode, and Mindy Kaling is great as the group’s temporary foil, especially considering the reasoning for her presence is just as unexplained as Dennis’ return, but I think we’re all glad that Dennis wound up being back, and I think we all knew deep inside that the show wouldn’t have worked for very long without him. The fact that they so quickly brought him back is proof of that (as is the season’s promotional material, which includes the Gang running away from a Dennis-like figure in a Jason Voorhees mask), and it makes me wonder if that was always the plan, or if they tried to break the season without Dennis around and realized that it couldn’t be done.

In any case, the gang is back in full force now (The Boys Are Back in Town!), and the mystery surrounding Dennis’ whereabouts really added an interesting layer to the show. Mac’s coping mechanisms were hilarious, as was the meta-commentary around Cindy’s plan and how they expertly sidestep any meaningful political commentary despite the episode’s title and the contents of the plan, and all of that makes “The Gang Makes Paddy’s Great Again” an excellent, raucous episode of IASIP, and it gets 9 liberal tears out of 10.

Here are some of the best lines from the episode:

Charlie: “No one ever really knows what’s going on with Mac. He’s fat, he’s skinny, he’s muscular, it’s really a cry for help and attention I think. So what you do in that situation is you ignore it.

Mac, to silence: “You guys like me, right?”

Mac/Dee: “It’s not like I’m going to have sex with it.” “He’s going to have sex with it the second we walk out of this door.”

Mac/Frank: “I tried, but apparently I can’t return the doll due to the custom nature of the usage of the doll.” “Banging its mouth.”

Cindy: “Stop trying to shoehorn your shirtlessness into plans that have no need for it.”

Cindy/Dee: “What the hell are you guys talking about?” “It called me a bird.”

Mac/Charlie: “Why did I do all this working out, Charlie?” “Nobody knows, man.”

Mac: “Tell her not to worry, I’m doing crunches.”

Mac: “Dennis is a bastard man.”

Frank: “After a series of events that I’d rather not go into, I came to the realization that the only way to not be humiliated by Dennis while playing the tuba was to play him.”

Dennis, about his facsimile sex doll: “Ah, Mac’s shooting his loads into it?”